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| A two-spotted bumble bee (Bombus bimaculatus) visiting a peony bud. |
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
The early bee and the flower
When is it too early for a bee to visit a flower? You might guess that bees would not be interested in visiting a flower before it has opened. However, if the flower in question were a peony, you would be wrong.
Even as buds, peony flowers produce nectar from glands on the sepals (the modified leaves surrounding the petals). In addition to opportunistic bees, this extrafloral nectar is likely to attract aggressive ants that would attack anything attempting to eat the flower itself.
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